OpenTopography’s full catalog of DOGAMI Oregon lidar data (currently 12,678 km²) can be accessed via our Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries Lidar Program Data page.

OpenTopography v 3.4:

• New Find Data page which displays not only OpenTopography hosted-data, but also provides linkages to data hosted at the NCALM Data Distribution Center and USGS Center for Lidar Coordination and Knowledge (CLICK).  The goal of this collaboration is to make it easier for lidar users to discover and link to online sources of data regardless of host.  This is phase one of OpenTopography’s work to facilitate data discovery, and we anticipate adding new partners to the Find Data page in 2012.


• Option to make all map-based pages in OT full width by hiding the left-hand menu.  Click the “Enlarge Map” button to try it out.
• Support for LASzip (LAZ) as a point cloud download format. LASzip is an open source lossless compression for lidar point cloud data in the LAS format that provides significant file size reductions, helpful when downloading or storing large datasets.
• Improvements to the OT data statistics dashboard provided to our data provider partners
• Updates to underlying point cloud data access system yields ~30% faster queries
• Formalized data validation process and reporting to check incoming lidar point cloud for errors.  Process also includes inserting coordinate system definition into datasets when not set by vendors.
• Tweak to TIN-based DEM generation tool to increase performance by ~17%
• Bug fixes and minor updates to user interface

OpenTopography v 3.5:

• Merged point cloud and pre-computed raster (DEM) data product access into a single dataset landing page to maintain consistent access to branding, metadata, etc.
• Migration of older datasets into modern OT point cloud data management system, yielding a massive (order of magnitude in some cases) speed up in data extraction times.  Migration impacts all EarthScope lidar datasets, B4, NSAF and Rainier, and the ECSZ dataset.
• Updated server hardware, yielding approximately 30% improvement in point cloud extraction time and better scalability.
• Bug fixes and minor updates to user interface

National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping datasets:
NCALM is an NSF-funded center that supports the use of airborne laser mapping technology (a.k.a. lidar) in the scientific community and is jointly operated by the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston and the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California-Berkeley. These ten datasets were all collected under NCALM’s graduate student seed proposal program that awards ten projects per year to graduate student PIs who need lidar data for their research.  Each collection is typically limited to no more than 40 square kilometers.  The datasets released in this batch are seed proposal collections performed in 2009 and 2010.

• NW Nevada: Modeling of Meander Channel Evolution
• Yosmemite National Park, CA: Rockfall Studies
• Bishop, CA: Morphological characteristics of the Bishop Tuff
• Central Utah: Topographic Amplification of Earthquake Ground Motions
• SW Montana: Beavers as geomorphic agents in small, Rocky Mountain streams
• Meteor Crater, AZ
• Chaco Canyon, NM: Simulating Dynamic Hydrological Processes
• Rio Puerco River, NM: Study of overbank flood dynamics
• Tuscaloosa, AL: Seasonal Inundation Dynamics And Invertebrate Communities
• Truro and Provincetown, MA: LiDAR in Salt March Environments

Critical Zone Observatories datasets:
Under OpenTopography’s MOU with the NSF CZOs, we will be hosting all lidar data products collected to support research at the six CZO sites.  The CZOs “are environmental laboratories established to study the chemical, physical and biological processes that shape the Earth’s surface”, and thus lidar is one of several tools being utilized. For this initial CZO data release, we’ve worked with the Christina River Basin CZO (Pennsylvania and Delaware) to ingest two datasets collected in 2010 - April (leaf-off) and July (leaf-on).  The full lidar point cloud as well as pre-computed standard digital elevation model data.

• Christina River Basin Critical Zone Observatory April 2010 LiDAR Survey
• Christina River Basin Critical Zone Observatory July 2010 LiDAR Survey

Thank you for sharing our enthusiasm for high resolution topography! We hope that you are finding OpenTopography useful. As you know, the goal of OT is to be a portal to high-resolution topography data and related tools. Over the past two years we have quadrupled the amount of data we host, and are adding new data weekly. We’ve also established memoranda of understanding for data distribution with the NSF National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, the NSF Critical Zone Observatories, the Tahoe Regional Planning Authority, and several other groups. We are also engaged in numerous formal and informal strategic partnerships that have resulted in new datasets and tools being available through OT. On the outreach and training front, we have lead a number of airborne and terrestrial LiDAR workshops, built a strong social media presence, established the OpenTopography Tool Registry, and provided advice on many lidar and geoinformatics projects. In the process, OT has grown to a community of over 1500 registered users plus countless users who access data and resources as a guest. If you have not been to the OT site for a while, we encourage you to check it out!

We are proud of these achievements and the science, engineering, planning, and education they have enabled. We are also excited for the future of OpenTopography. OpenTopography is funded jointly by the Instrumentation and Facilities program of the Earth Science Division, the Office of Cyberinfrastructure, and the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation. In January 2012 we have to submit a renewal proposal to continue OpenTopography operations after September 2012. We need your help to make sure that our NSF colleagues and reviewers really appreciate the impact OT has had, and that they understand the need to provide strong sustained funding for online access to Earth science lidar data. Recall that your acknowledgment of OpenTopography support also provides a measure of OpenTopographyıs success and will help to ensure continued funding.

As we prepare our proposal, we would like to gather some information from you--our user community. Please take the OpenTopography User Survey by January 1st so that we can incorporate responses into our renewal proposal to the NSF.

Thanks again,

-The OpenTopography Team

Exhibit Hall
OpenTopography / NCALM Booth: This year we’ll be sharing a double booth with our colleagues from the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, who are funded by NSF to collect airborne lidar data.  With a shared booth, there will be one stop to learn about NSF-related lidar topography activities.  The booth is on “NSF Street”, #1123.  Come by to see demos of OpenTopography, learn about available data, ask questions, or just say hi.

UNAVCO Booth: As collaborators on the NASA Lidar Access System (NLAS) project, and the lead for the NSF Plate Boundary Observatory, look for OpenTopography lidar system demos and NLAS demos at the UNAVCO booth throughout the week.

Scientific Presentations
Tues, Dec 6, 1:40 PM - 6 PM: ED23A-0614. Professional Development for Researchers in Solid Earth Science Evolved to Include Scientific and Educational Content Susan C. Eriksson; Ramon Arrowsmith; Shelley E. Olds

Wed Dec. 7, 5:40 PM - 6:00 PM: IN34A-06. Leveraging Open Standards and Technologies to Enhance Community Access to Earth Science Lidar Data (Invited) Christopher J. Crosby; Viswanath Nandigam; Sriram Krishnan; Charles Cowart; Chaitan Baru; Ramon Arrowsmith

Fri Dec 9, 12:05 PM - 12:20 PM: IN52A-08. Citation, Curation, and Preservation of Scientific Data: A Case Study Based on Lidar Topographic Data Chaitan Baru; Christopher J. Crosby; Ardys Kozbial; David Minor

Fri Dec 9, 5:30 PM - 5:45 PM: IN54A-07. NLAS: Improving the Accessibility and Utility of Lidar Waveform Data in the Earth Sciences Christopher J. Crosby; J. B. Blair; Claudia C. Carabajal; Terence M. Haran; Michelle A. Hofton; SiriJodha S. Khalsa; Jeff McWhirter; Charles M. Meertens; Viswanath Nandigam

Andrews Experimental Forest and Willamette National Forest LiDAR (Aug 2008):

Watershed Sciences, Inc. collected Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data from HJ Andrews and the Willamette National Forest (NF) on August 10th and 11th 2008. Total area of the study is 17,705 acres. The total area of delivered LiDAR including 100m buffer is 19,493 acres.  The dataset collection was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research Program, US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, and Oregon State University.  In addition to the point cloud dataset, standard DEMs are also available for download from OpenTopography.

2005 San Diego Urban Region Lidar:

2005 Lidar coverage over cities of San Diego, Poway, and Chula Vista. These lidar data are part of a larger project that collected lidar for a number of coastal cities in San Diego County. Data from the same 2005 lidar project may be available for other cities beyond San Diego, Poway, and Chula Vista but those cities should be contacted individually. Lidar data were collected in conjunction with a three-inch resolution imagery collection for San Diego, Poway, and Chula Vista. Lidar products include LAS files and ASCII canopy data at a minimum; Poway adds two foot contours. Point spacing of LAS data is approximately one meter. Data have also been resampled to a one-ninth arc second grid (three meter spacing) and placed within the National Elevation Dataset.

In addition, the point cloud data have been updated in three areas where point cloud data was cut off over islands and spits inside the inner boundary of Lake Tahoe.

On account of yesterday’s southern California power outage, most OpenTopography systems are currently unavailable.  The OpenTopography homepage: http://opentopography.org has been restored, but all data access, processing, and related services are currently down.  We’ll be working with San Diego Supercomputer Center IT support staff to bring servers up and restore full functionality as soon as possible.  Thank you for your patience.

Thank you for your patience.  If you have comments or concerns please contact us at info@opentopography.org.

On account of an unplanned power outage at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, certain OpenTopography services are down as of 4:45 pm Pacific on Friday August 5th.  We are monitoring the situation and will restore OpenTopography services once power has been restored.  Thank you for your patience.